As a 2007 JD/MSW joint degree graduate from USC, Gregory Pleasants has had an interdisciplinary career as a public interest lawyer, social work clinician and advocate, and teacher at the graduate and undergraduate level.

As a 2007-2009 Equal Justice Works fellow, Pleasants fought for the right to counsel and to strengthen due process for people in immigration detention with serious mental health conditions. With many others, Pleasants helped to lay the groundwork for Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, which established the first right to counsel (as a reasonable accommodation) in immigration court.

Later, at the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Vera Institute of Justice, Pleasants helped build and manage the National Qualified Representative Program, the nation’s first public defender program in immigration court. Following this work, Pleasants served as one of the founding executives of the Acacia Center for Justice, a national immigrants’ rights nonprofit dedicated to creating and scaling legal defense programs for all immigrants at risk of detention or deportation.

Pleasants has worked as a trial attorney at Federal Defenders of San Diego and as an assistant public defender in North Carolina, providing person-centered defense to people accused of crimes in federal and state court. As a social work clinician, Pleasants provided short-term treatment to people in a locked psychiatric hospital, including to adult men experiencing acute mental health crisis and brought to the hospital on involuntary holds. He has taught graduate-level social work students at California State University, Fullerton, law students at the USC Gould School of Law and now teaches Mental Health Law to USC undergraduates.

In 2023, Pleasants founded his own law firm – Gregory Pleasants Law, APC – dedicated to government transparency, educational rights for children with disabilities, and removal defense for people in immigration detention with serious mental health conditions.